From City Heights to PBS

Eduardo Corona, left, teaches a college prep course to students in the Reality Changers program, which helps disadvantaged students get into college. Eduardo is profiled in the upcoming PBS documentary "The Graduates." Johnny Salas, right, shares a moment with Corona in the lesson.
— Sean M. Haffey

Eduardo Corona, left, teaches a college prep course to students in the Reality Changers program, which helps disadvantaged students get into college. Eduardo is profiled in the upcoming PBS documentary "The Graduates." Johnny Salas, right, shares a moment with Corona in the lesson.
— Sean M. Haffey

He does not love the fact that the TV-viewing world will know what he looked like when his head was shaved and his face was scary. Or that the sweaty hours he spent jogging for the cameras resulted in just a few minutes of jogging screen time. Or that the awkward hours a camera crew spent following him around SDSU resulted in no screen time at all.

Such is the small price San Diego’s Eduardo Corona paid for his starring role in "The Graduates/Los Graduados," an installment of the PBS "Independent Lens"documentary series that tackles the educational challenges facing Latino and Latina teens. Eduardo Corona — former gang member and human cautionary tale — is about to be a nationally televised success story, and he is more than OK with that.

“I hope when people see this, they will see that there are kids out there who are the same as me, and they just need an extra push,” the 21-year-old Corona said earlier this week. “They just need a little bit of help so they can open up and change.”

A smart, beautifully shot documentary by New York-based filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, ﻿“The Graduates” follows six teens who have vaulted over some major hurdles on their journey to high school graduation and beyond. The first hour — which airs Oct. 28 at 10 p.m. on KPBS-TV — focuses on Latina girls. Part Two — which airs locally at 10 p.m. on Nov. 4 — is all about the boys

Independent Lens/The Graduates

When: Oct 28 and Nov. 4 at 10 p.m.

Where: KPBS-TV/Channel 15, Cable 11

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In the boys’ hour, we meet Juan, a gay Massachusetts teen who struggles with bullying. There is also Gustavo, a Georgia sparkplug whose college-bound dreams are derailed by his undocumented status. And there is Eduardo, the sweet-faced troublemaker who discovers the redemptive powers of education. The catalyst is Reality Changers, the San Diego-based nonprofit that gives teens from disadvantaged backgrounds the tools and support they need to become first-generation college students.

Filmed in and around the City Heights neighborhood where he still lives, Corona’s segments introduce viewers to a kid who was headed down a bad path almost as soon as he could walk. His older sister was in a gang. His older brother was in a gang. His parents put in such long hours cleaning hotels, they weren’t around when Eduardo started following in his siblings’ dead-end footsteps.

Ditching. Flunking. Stealing. Before stumbling into Reality Changers, Corona did it all. For filmmaker Ruiz, the narrative was depressingly familiar. The young man behind it was not.

“Eduardo’s story is emblematic of many young men’s stories, but one of the things his story did was successfully tell why he was pulled into the gang,” Ruiz said. “You see the lack of opportunity, the lack of economic pathways and the lack of community support. You see Eduardo facing jail time for breaking into an elementary school, and you see Reality Changers saying, ‘We still believe in this student and we are going to continue to work with him.’

“What you get out of that is someone who became a youth leader. If he hadn’t faced those challenges, he wouldn’t be as effective as he is.”

In “The Graduates,” you also get to see the turning point in the Eduardo Corona story. It came in 2006, when Reality Changers founder Christopher Yanov saw the surly middle schooler at the Copley Family YMCA and decided Corona would be an interesting addition to the organization’s college-prep program. He had no idea how right he would turn out to be.

“It worked for me because I was surrounded by all of these people who were exactly like me,” Corona said during an interview in the group’s City Heights offices. “But their goals were getting high GPAs, going to Reality Changers and getting into college.”

Six years later, the unsmiling guy who looked so intimidating in early Reality Changers group photos (viewers of “The Graduates” can see them and judge for themselves) is a happy and sociable junior majoring in psychology at San Diego State University. His older brother is working and attending City College, his younger brother is in Reality Changers, and his mother is taking adult classes in English and math.

And after rising through the Reality Changers ranks, Corona now heads the group’s College Town program, where he does whatever it takes to help more than 200 middle and high school students get the grades and the enriching experiences they’ll need for the college track and maintain the attitude necessary to stay there.

“Eduardo always had a gaggle of kids following him around. He was sort of like a shepherd, driving someone home or helping someone with their homework,” Ruiz said admiringly. “He is a great combination of sweetness and toughness. That reads really well on screen, and people respond to that because it is coming from a really honest place.”

To help promote “The Graduates,” Corona and Yanov have traveled to Beverly Hills and Miami, where Corona swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time and got to rub elbows with actor Wilmer Valderrama and other Latino celebrities who also appear in the film. Being in a national documentary has its perks, but as Yanov is quick to point out, the biggest payoff will be happening on the other side of the screen.

“When kids in the neighborhood watch this, they will see someone from their own streets who is in a movie because he’s done something good. The news that comes from their streets doesn’t usually include positive outcomes, but they can see this and think, ‘That’s possible.’ ”